For Paul Rajashekar, a systematics professor at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, the onslaught of questions surrounding recent discussions of human cloning were hardly new.

Dr. Rajashekar found journalists and others on his doorstep this month when scientist Richard Seed told the world he anticipated cloning a human being within two years. Questions came from Action News, The Philadelphia Daily News -- and many others. He was asked to revisit the kinds of issues that surfaced last year when the Roslin Institute cloned Dolly the sheep, and in 1993 when researchers at the George Washington Medical Center first split embryos.

"As human beings we face an ambivalence," says Rajashekar, a native of India who has worked in the past internationally with the Lutheran World Federation. "On the one hand we’re used to hearing about and applauding scientific breakthroughs concerning challenges like cancer and traveling to the farthest parts of space.

"But the cloning of humans raises apprehensions, fears and doubts. It’s inevitable, probably. But the idea is repugnant to many humans because we fear dehumanizing -- because cloning poses questions about the future, nature, design and destiny of the human race. The fundamental fear, I think, is that the distinctiveness of human beings may be lost.

"People wish to guard their distinctiveness. Our fears are prompted by claims suggesting that scientists may try to play the role of God and perhaps mess up with Mother Nature," Rajashekar says. "Of course, Richard Seed wishes his experiments to benefit the lives of infertile people, but the ambivalence arises just the same...."

Rajashekar noted that in vitro fertilization as a means of helping infertile couples conceive a baby has been "welcomed for some time...Some say cloning is similar. Can’t we accept both? But I would say we have serious differences in the two procedures. We need to be very cautious..."

Rajashekar explains that in vitro takes a healthy seed of a male and an egg of a female and nurtures them in a test tube before implanting them in the uterus of a woman. "It is basically a natural process," Rajashekar says. "Nobody knows how the child will come out. The new life is not programmed."

Cloning, he says, is different and involves two possibilities. "The first is similar to in vitro," he says. "An embryo is split into duplicates.and transplanted into the womb to produce almost identical copies," he says. "We don’t know whether this would be successful in humans. It’s a complex process to do embryonic cloning that we’re not sure is feasible, but in principle it is."

The second method, proposed by Richard Seed and accomplished in Dolly the sheep at Roslin is "Somatic" cloning which makes use of microsurgery using the cell of an individual, adapting it to make an undifferentiated cell whose features unite with an egg using only necessary genes. "This type of cloning," Rajashekar says, "deliberately manipulates the genetic makeup of a cell to produce desired traits..." in what Rajashekar recalls was the theme in the film "Boys from Brazil."

"This approach worked with Dolly, after many tries, but would it work with humans?" Rajashekar wonders. He believes that sooner or later the temptation for scientific fame and enterprising clinics may be too much to resist.

"But we have to ask ourselves, what does this mean?" he says. "What will be left of our distinctiveness if manufacturing tissue is reduced to deciphering a genetic map? We would be programming living material as is done with microchips. Isn’t this a reductionist view of individuals that would dehumanize who we are?

"Our Christian perspective is that humans are subjects of divine creation -- the image of God," he says. "It is a profound theological concept that all of us have a distinctiveness. This idea is reinforced by the theological idea of incarnation, where God has come to dwell with us in the form of a human person -- Christ. This act reinforces the inherent worth of all humans...."

Rajashekar says he believes that cloning, therefore, would "take away from those characteristics of each individual which are a gift from God. Creating Somatic chips would reduce the inherent freedom embodied in each individual human.

"We really haven’t done nearly enough to understand fully the outcome of certain practical questions," he says. "If we try embryonic cloning, could we not have bizarre scenarios? What are the medical risks in genetic manipulation or producing cloned individuals? Are we sure such a person we could create would be free of genetic defects? In sorting out or eliminating genetic defects, might we create new ones we can’t imagine?"

Then come psycho-social questions. "How will a clone mother have two other clone children and how will their relationship be defined?" he wonders. The answer is tied up in mystery, he says. "To what extent are we products of environment, versus the nature of our personalities?" he asks.

In the end, Rajashekar believes it is probably most appropriate not to restrict research in any way, but to produce an international ban on human cloning until much more may be learned.

"A key question is one of science’s accountability to the whole of society," Rajashekar says. "What is the purpose of cloning people, and who decides whom to clone? The individual and dignity of humans must be preserved. Once the practice of human cloning is unleashed, it could affect the future of the human race in an uncontrollable way that would threaten the God-given makeup of the individual.

"Just because we can clone a human being doesn’t mean we should," he continues. "The question comes down to practicing good stewardship with the gifts we receive from God." In the case of human cloning, he suggests, that may come down to a painful choice between exercising the gift of scientific creativity -- or the gift of responsibility.